


there's a hunger in my heart (there's an itch under my skin)

by glueskin



Category: Servamp (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Injuries, Past Abuse, Possibly Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic & Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 06:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20671016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glueskin/pseuds/glueskin
Summary: touma tends to iori's injuries after an incident within C3.that's all it is. all it ever will be.





	there's a hunger in my heart (there's an itch under my skin)

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has spoilers (sort of? vaguely?) for recent manga chapters, so please dont read unless youve caught up.
> 
> please heed the internalized homophobia tag here. there is a scene where touma remembers his sexual encounter with the spoiler character i mentioned and how he had been physically sick after; the sexual encounter itself is not described in detail, nor is his vomiting, and so i didnt up the rating to explicit or put the vomiting in the tag
> 
> this fic is, uh...i dont know what to say. if youve known me since i got into servamp and touma was introduced you know i used to fucking hate him but now i live like this. t strike said evil repressed gays who perpetuate a cycle of abuse and then get clowned by teenagers who are like "actually, just because your parents were abusive and evil doesnt mean you have to be" have rights and maybe. just maybe. i became invested :(

Shirota’s hair had come loose. Touma looks away, not wanting to watch as he grumbles, weapon dissolving into shadow so he can tie it back again.  
  
Iori is smiling at him. Touma doesn’t look at him, either, letting his magic melt away from him as he pats down his pant pockets for his cigarettes and lighter.  
  
“If we’re quite done,” he says. From anyone else it would be an ambiguous _ if you don’t need me anymore I’m leaving_; from him it means _ even if you need me I’m leaving_. He moves to leave the room, stepping over the mangled corpse of the wolf man who had fled C3’s cellars.  
  
“Actually,” Shirota starts to say as he approaches the door. Apprehension crawls up Touma’s spine, but he pauses in a way he wouldn’t if anyone else had spoken.  
  
“I need to get back home,” Shirota keeps saying, tone apologetic, and if it had been a year ago Touma would have told him that his personal matters are meaningless in the face of work that needs to be done.  
  
A year ago, Shirota had not been raising a child.  
  
“And?” Touma asks, jaw clenched. What favor will Shirota ask of him? He’s already thinking of who he will delegate whichever task to. Did he forget to file paperwork for weapon use again? A day off?  
  
“Can you take care of Iori?”  
  
It isn’t what he expected. He should have, though, because Shirota has always tried to be the one to tend to Iori’s hurts after times like this; unthinkingly Touma’s gaze flickers towards the man in question.  
  
Iori’s smile has dropped slightly. The sleeves of his once fine-pressed—now wrinkled—dress shirt are rolled up to the elbows as thin yet deep gashes ooze blood against his skin.  
  
“I can handle it, Tooru,” Iori says. He dislikes the infirmary. Touma remembers this because—well. He tells himself it’s because of the fuss Shirota had kicked up about carrying around medkits and staying late to look after him when he’d found out and not because of the familiar expression of fear and discomfort he had seen on Iori’s face when they were teenagers.  
  
He thinks about leaving it at that. About turning to Shirota and saying _ See? He can handle it himself. He’s a grown man_. He imagines the disappointment in Shirota’s face; imagines that he would stay as Touma walked away, despite Iori’s insistence, and that he would be late to return home to the child in his care.  
  
He remembers Touma worryingly talking to Iori about the child's independent behavior. How he tries to cook dinner for them both every night, how he tries to avoid saying anything that might make Shirota worry for him.  
  
“Fine,” he says.  
  
In his periphery Iori looks surprised. Somehow Shirota doesn’t and Touma—  
  
Touma hates him. Touma hates him so much he feels sick with it.  
  
_ I hate you_, he thinks, chanting the words in his mind as Shirota smiles. There are fresh lines that crease the edges of his warm eyes as he does so, and Touma loathes the fact he notices.  
  
“Thanks, Touma. I’ll make it up to you,” he says. And, to Iori, “We’re still getting lunch on Thursday, right?”  
  
“Right,” Iori says in a daze, and Touma thinks, resentful, _ you still eat together every week? _  
  
Shirota leaves. He has to walk right past Touma to do so; he gives him another smile as he does, and he doesn’t clap his shoulder the way he would Iori or anyone else’s. The consideration makes his skin crawl.  
  
_ I’m not that fragile, _ he wants to say. But Shirota has never touched him more than necessary, not since he had grabbed his arm in high school and Touma had frozen under his grip in a way that had said far more than his senseless violence ever did.  
  
It doesn’t mean anything. Shirota is just that sickeningly kind.  
  
“You don’t have to,” Iori says when Shirota is gone. He had held his tongue until the man left, knowing he would fuss; Touma, irritated, almost bites through the filter of the cigarette he finally places between his teeth.  
  
“If I was unwilling,” he says, trying to relax his jaw, “I wouldn’t do anything.”  
  
Iori is quiet. It’s a nerve Touma knows he hadn’t intended to strike—or maybe he had, to make Touma leave. He can never tell with Iori, who never stops smiling, even when he’s in pain.  
  
“Follow me,” he finally says, leaving the room and the corpse behind. Clean up will take care of it. After a moment, Iori follows, the heels of his dress shoes clicking against the linoleum.  
  
Iori follows him all the way to his office. Blood drips down along his arms in messy rivulets, leaving a trail along the floor, but he says nothing to Touma about it. He’ll apologize to the cleaning staff personally before he leaves.  
  
Touma’s office is sparse. His desk chair is made of fine leather he never would have been able to afford a few years ago; the wood of his furniture is dark and polished, the lights kept dim to accommodate his frequent migraines.  
  
In his desk drawer is a medical kit he keeps just in case. Like Iori, he is averse to the infirmary.  
  
Unlike Iori, he doesn’t allow Shirota to _ take care _ of him.  
  
He doesn’t bite down on his cigarette but it’s a close thing.  
  
“Sit down,” he says roughly. Iori does so; he sits on the only chair reserved for guests as Touma takes the kit out from his drawer, sitting in his chair and dragging himself close to Iori by the wheels.  
  
“I would have been fine,” Iori says. Despite his words there’s relief and gratitude in his eyes, even as blood drips between them, his arms carefully angled so that the red splatters against the hardwood and not either of their legs.  
  
“I know,” Touma says. He would have been, after a few hours or days to recover from the discomfort of going through a medical examination. He says nothing else as he opens the kit, leaving the plastic case on the desk beside him as he rolls up his own sleeves and takes out what he needs.  
  
Tweezers. Cotton swabs. Rubbing alcohol. He dabs the cotton with the liquid methodically, ignoring the strong scent of the alcohol and the memories it brings.  
  
He’s gotten good at that. Ignoring.  
  
He ignores Iori’s gaze, too, as he leans over. He takes Iori’s wrist in his hand and doesn’t let himself think about the way Iori goes still under his touch.  
  
He doesn’t want to think about the reason Iori reacts like this with him. He can’t.  
  
Instead, he thinks of nothing at all as he wipes down each of the long gashes against Iori’s arm. There aren’t many of them today—the werewolf had howled and clawed against Iori’s barrier but had not broken it before Touma and Shirota arrived to put the beast down.  
  
But he had damaged it enough to break Iori’s skin. The remnants of dozens of other similar injuries lay against Iori’s pale skin—some years old and almost white in color, others redder and more recent.  
  
Touma’s arms are covered in scars, too. He can’t tell if he resents Iori for the fact his are by choice, and Touma’s—  
  
Touma’s don’t bear thinking about.  
  
There’s more blood than Touma had expected. He forgets that these injuries bleed heavily—something about the magic, but he doesn’t know the details of the Tsukimitsu techniques. He uses half the package of swabs just wiping away the blood before it could dry and crust against Iori’s skin before getting to the injuries themselves.  
  
If Iori feels any pain or discomfort, he doesn’t allow it to show. He makes no noise as the alcohol is rubbed, without any of Shirota’s gentleness, into his injuries. When Touma is done the bleeding has slowed considerably; droplets of red bead up against the skin but don’t run down Iori’s arms in a nauseatingly familiar way.  
  
Iori is usually more talkative. Touma can’t tell if he’s relieved or not by his silence as he takes out a roll of cotton bandages, wrapping them around Iori’s arms one at a time and watching as the first layer of white becomes slightly pink with blood before he continues.  
  
“Touma,” Iori says when he finishes. Touma meets his gaze properly for the first time of the night.  
  
He’s not smiling.  
  
“What?” Touma asks, his voice more annoyed than he actually is. Iori unsettles him—he always has. Most people do, he tells himself. There’s no reason. _ No reason_.  
  
Iori touches his wrist, gentler than Touma had been when grabbing his. Just barely he skims his fingers against his flesh; Touma doesn’t move. Doesn’t let himself look down.  
  
Iori doesn’t look down, either. He never stares at Touma’s arms. Doesn’t stare at the rest of him, either, the few times he has seen Touma in clothes that bare more skin or in states of undress.  
  
That is to say, he doesn’t stare in the way that others do. His gaze lingers not on Touma’s grotesque scars but on the pull of his muscles and the slope of his shoulders. Touma pretends not to know. Pretends he doesn’t look at Iori that same way—that he doesn’t look at anyone that same way.  
  
“Thank you,” Iori says. His words linger between the two of them, heavy with meaning. For a wild, brief moment, Touma wonders—  
  
What would Iori’s mouth feel like beneath his? Iori would let him, he knows. Would want him to. Would he feel different than a woman? Would he taste like those flavored coffees he’s so fond of? Would his hands be rougher against the planes of Touma’s back—calloused instead of soft? How would he sound, with his voice low and smooth instead of soft and high?  
  
He wonders, but only for that foolish, fleeting moment. Then comes the memory of Shirota’s face as he clutched Touma by the collar of his shirt, expression torn apart with grief—the memory of Shirota’s sister, of her smile that curved the same way as her brother’s, of the softness of her body under his and the hitch in her airy voice.  
  
Of the pity and understanding in her gaze and in the way she had touched his back as he emptied his stomach against the hotel floor not five minutes after he had taken her.  
  
Touma pulls his hand away. Iori’s expression closes off, just as Touma knows his own has—but unlike Touma’s carefully cultivated expression of indifference, Iori’s is a smile so close to the genuine ones he wears around Shirota that anyone but Touma would be fooled.  
  
“Get out,” Touma says around his still unlit cigarette. “And remember to let the staff know to clean up the mess you made of the halls.”  
  
“Of course,” Iori demures, carefully rolling down his sleeves as he stands. “Thank you again for your time, Touma. Try not to get so lost in your work that you forget your friends, hm?”  
  
_ What friends_, Touma wants to say, but he says nothing instead.  
  
He watches Iori walk away and doesn’t let himself regret.


End file.
